To “provide an immediate response to people in mental distress”, the government announced, this Monday, September 27, the launch of a national suicide prevention number, from Friday. A measure that was part of the promises made during the “Ségur de la santé” in July 2020.
This service will be “free” and “accessible 7 days a week and 24 hours a day, from all over the country,” said the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, at the opening of the Conference on mental health and psychiatry. It was designed to complement the VigilanS system, created in 2015 in Hauts-de-France, the objective of which is to recall and monitor “people who have attempted suicide”.
Our society must operate a revolution: stop seeing mental health as a curious or shameful object, while 2 in 3 French people will suffer from a mental disorder in their lifetime. It is this new perspective that will animate the foundations of mental health and psychiatry. https://t.co/IgEl96pz0Y
– Olivier Véran (@olivierveran) September 27, 2021
VigilanS is to date “deployed in 12 out of 13 metropolitan regions and in two overseas regions”. The objective is to strengthen it so that it covers the whole of French territory “before the end of this year”. According to the Minister of Health, “nearly 15,000 patients” used it in 2020 and already “10,000 at the beginning of June of this year”.
At the same time, the national suicide prevention number is presented as a new tool in the management of mental health. Those who will be part of it will be put in touch with “trained and mobilized health professionals, in conjunction with healthcare stakeholders in each region”. Olivier Véran assures us that they will be able to “provide answers adapted to any situation”.
